Miseria Cantare
by mixed.vinyl
Summary: Every person has a life, a heart, a soul. A story. Written for the Minority Rules Challenges. Ten stories on ten overlooked Death Eaters - Misery will sing.
1. Fenrir Greyback

Written for the Minority Rules challenge. 10 drabbles/stories on 10 minor characters in Harry Potter. Reviews very much appreciated.

To the wicked and the forgotten.

_ - Li_

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**The Man on the Moon**

I am ten years, eleven months and twenty-eight days old today. Just a tiny child.

Tomorrow, I will be eleven years old exactly. Wise. Mature. Old enough to go to Hogwarts, get a job, buy Grandma a cottage by the sea, marry, have kids, become the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts – no, the world – has even seen. Grandma says that, with my brains, I will go places. She's wrong. I will fly.

But for now, I am still ten. A piece of nothing in the night. One more night. Tomorrow morning, I will be reborn like the phoenix from its ashes. Something new and wonderful. Not really me, but still myself. When the sky shatters, I will put the shards together again, as Grandma fixed the china vase in the hall with a wave of her wand. Invincible.

The clock on the wall ticks by slowly. Only an hour left. I can't sleep. The full moon streams in through a crack in the curtains. I get up and pull them all the way open. The moon is larger than I imagined. It blocks out the stars, even the flickering lamppost at the end of the street. I can see the Man on the Moon smiling at me. He's giving me an early congratulation. A good omen.

A cricket chirps in the dark. Rare for late winter. Another omen. Should I sit quietly and listen to its music, or venture outside to cup him in my hands, like water from the faucet, running to an infinite stop? I ponder for a moment and choose the latter. A birthday present to myself. Perhaps Grandma will charm it to sing me to sleep.

I open my window and crawl out into the night. I forget to take a jacket, but it doesn't matter. Cricket catching is my expertise. I'll be back before tomorrow, safe and sound in bed. Grandma will never know what happened. The breeze is cool, but not cold. Spring is in the air. Soon Grandma and I will rummage out the rake and hoe and get to work on the garden. She has promised me my own patch this year, to do what I like. Anything at all.

The cricket chirps again. I abandon my visionary garden for the real one. The cricket's near. I search all around the house but find nothing. Outside the gate then. Lifting the latch quietly, so as not to waken Grandma, I step across the boundary between my world and theirs. It's dark, but the moon lights a path for me. Straight to the cricket, singing his heart out on the other side of the asphalt road. I run over without checking for cars. It's too late. No one is out at this hour.

And then from nowhere, it hits me. A heavy mass of fur that blocks out the moon. It's dark and sweaty and smells like pain. There are claws extending, teeth snapping. I fight back. It overpowers me easily. Skin breaks and I smell metallic blood. My blood. I scream and it screams back. Something burns past the skin into my veins, my muscles, my bones. There is cracking and growling and more screaming. I am burning alive.

Lights snap on as the neighbours wake. Curtains open. People point and gesture, don't move. Can they see me under it, gasping for breath? I try to choke out a cry for help, but nothing comes out except more shrieking and howling. My voice has abandoned me. No one is coming to help, not even Grandma clutching her dressing gown in the living room. The cricket has long fled. I will die alone, under a thousand eyes.

The pile of fur grabs a chunk of my arm with its teeth and drags me off the street. No one runs out to save me, waving a wand, a gun, a broken chair leg. Nothing but words streaming out of gaping mouths. And then even that disappears. I am dragged past the last house and into the bushes. Through the mud and snow until there is only numbness and shallow breaths. The fire has gone, replaced by a dull ache. My body feels like it's been distorted beyond repair. Not just bruises and scratches and bites but bones and heart and soul. Even my brain feels gone. I want to pass out and forget, but I don't remember what to forget. There is a strange hollow sensation in my stomach, like I haven't eaten for months. This is absurd. I just ate…

But when? What? How? Look, there is the squirrel coming from its den. Smell, there is the bear still in hibernation. Listen, there is the owl hooting softly. What to choose, what to choose. My head wants to explode. I fade.

When I wake up, it's morning. I don't know where I am. My clothes are gone. I am naked in the cold, curled up beside a pile of dead leaves. There is a disgusting taste in my mouth. I puke. Fur and feathers come out, coupled with the occasional bone. What have I been doing?

The night comes back. Moon, cricket, hurt. Grandma watching silently. Teeth and blood. The distortion, the melding of bones, the forgetting. The sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize your life is a lie. No one loves you. No one needs you. No one wants you. Not even the Man on the Moon can save you from the downward spiral. Dreams are the things that nightmares are made of. They twist and they turn and you think your close but you get further and further until you don't remember what you're running to or what you'll do when you get there. The clock keeps ticking, too fast and too slow, never stopping, counting down the minutes, the seconds, the infinitesimal moments of childhood.

I am eleven years old today. Exactly. Not a boy anymore. A monster. Broken winged. Grounded. I am going nowhere.

When the sky shatters, who will piece it together?


	2. Rudolphus Lestrange

**'Til Death Do Us Part**

Bellatrix Black.

Those two words will haunt me forever. They are a spell that cursed me to a life of love and misery. Sweeter than the best Honeyduke's chocolate and more potent than the Draught of Living Death. But Merlin, how I love the woman who goes with the name, enchantress that she is. I love the strands of black hair curling down to the small of her back, the heavy-lidded grey eyes, and the lines of arrogance around the corners of her mouth. I love the sweet smell of her skin when she stepped out of the shower, the smile of sleeping contentment that greeted me every morning, the taste of her tongue in my mouth. I love her fierce determination, her conviction that she is always right, and her unwavering loyalty. I know every one of her quirks: the haughty flick of her hair, the impatient tapping of her nails, and the half-secretive look in her eyes. She's a flirt, a harpy, a monster, a whore, a delusion of damned perfection reincarnated. How can I ever hope to find her equal in charm and attraction, in lies and deceit, in life and death?

I will never quite understand how someone like her could love someone like me, the little fucked up oddity with his head screwed on the wrong way and the wrong parts in the wrong places. I paled to the transparency of a Hogwarts ghost in comparison to her beauty and talents. But somehow, when I managed to stutter out a desperate invitation to Hogsmeade after six years, she accepted.

And she stayed. She put up with my idiocy and indulged my hero worship without complaint. She let me dog her footsteps from the Common Room to the Great Hall to her classes to the Quidditch pitch back to the Common Room. For two blissful years, her perfection lit up the darkest corners of my life and brushed away the dust and spiders in my brain, and I was happy. Ecstatic. I wanted nothing more than to stay petrified in time forever and never have to leave.

When we left Hogwarts, I knew I should propose. Bella was impatient, always had been, and if I didn't find a way to make her mine forever, she would laugh as she ground my face in her dust. Spineless Flobberworm that I was, it took three bottles of Firewhiskey to drown my fears and loosen my tongue enough to spew out a jumbled up proposal that even I could barely understand. And I never thought to buy a ring.

At school, in the brief moments when we had talked of the future, Bella was always determined to join the Dark Lord's cause. I was not half as adamant as she was, but I was willing to follow her through each and every circle of hell if she asked me to. The first thing we did after our marriage was to beg the Dark Lord to accept our services. He burned the Dark Mark into our skin and just like that, we became Death Eaters. Servants, until death do we part.

The tasks he set us were simple at first: terrorize a few Mudblood cities and knock out some Ministry officials. Grunt work for new recruits. But Bella's obvious zeal and talent propelled her rapidly through the ranks, taking me with her. The higher we rose, the more fanatic she became. The Dark Lord's name was forever on her lips and she was full of his praises to the skies. If he'd asked her to cut off her own head and present it to him on a platter of goblin-wrought silver, she would've done it, no hesitation and no regrets. In fact, she would have been bloody well euphoric.

The Mudbloods say that a rose by any other name would be just as sweet. They know nothing. Bellatrix Lestrange was not the same woman as Bellatrix Black. She wasn't my darling Bella anymore; she was _his_ Bella, his general, his most trusted advisor. And still I loved her. She consumed me with a hopeless, empty love that no sparks and no return, just a dull, aching stove of dying embers. I would've given anything if I had been given the grace to hate her, but I didn't have the heart to loathe the woman that had been, and still was, my life.

But the Dark Lord I was free to abhor, if not openly than at least in the secret depths of my mind. With every step that Bella took away from me, I hated the Dark Lord more, until I would've been quite glad to see Dumbledore blast him to pieces. I never stopped doing his bidding for Bella's sake, but it became a labour that I dreaded every morning when I woke up and damned every night in my dreams. I was helping to build an empire that I would have rather seen burn and crumble into flames.

And then the impossible happened. A miracle that almost saved me. The Dark Lord disappeared, shattered by a mere toddler by the name of Harry Potter. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my chest. What I did care that James and Lily Potter were dead and that the Death Eaters were going the same way? Finally I could breathe again. I was quite prepared to denounce anyone and everyone to the Ministry of Magic and go free. There was plenty of suspicion but no proof to tie me to the Death Eaters. I would take Bella and we would start again somewhere else: France, Germany, America, wherever she wanted to go, I would take her, and we would be happy. I would win her back from the Dark Lord's grip. We were still young; it wasn't too late for us to live out our dreams. But Bella had different plans. Even though he was gone, he was still locked in her heart like a poison, drowning her in obsession, and she was determined to find him. She took to torturing Aurors for information and I followed her blindly because I couldn't bear being separated from her. It was too late for me to turn back; she was my heart and mind and soul.

The rest is history. We were caught and sent to Azkaban. It was almost a relief in a way. I could live safely in all my memories of past love and splendour. I suppose at one time, the Dementors would have taken them from me and driven me to the brink of insanity, but not anymore. You can never go back to a moment when you were truly happy, and I had long ago passed the dividing line between passion and psychosis. Bella was so full of utter wretchedness in my heart that even those happy memories from Hogwarts had become a burden, another load to bend and crack my already distorted body.

Bellatrix Black.

My life started with those two words and it will end with them. She trapped me, poisoned me with her love and left me for dead. I'm breathing still, wasting away in Azkaban, but I've been dead for years. When Bellatrix Black died, she took the pieces of me with her and left behind an empty shell, a pathetic excuse for life. I couldn't be hollower if the Dementors embraced me as their own. Kissed me. Fucked me.

I don't want to leave Azkaban unless it's in a body bag. I don't want to go out and meet the shadow of the woman I love. I would see the Dark Lord looking out of the windows of her eyes and I'd want to kill her, but I wouldn't because her body would still belong to Bella, my sweet, darling, intoxicating Bella.

Bella, Bella, Bella. If I promise not to fuck up again, will you save me in the end? Will you cleanse my heart of all memories of you, only you, because there hasn't been room for anyone else for a long time. Will you give me back at least a fragment of that perfection, that innocence, that deluded fucking lunacy that used to be ours? Will you press your mouth to mine and suck out your poison? No, I think not. You will leave me to suffer and suffer, and never ever die.

And I would love you for it.


	3. Peter Pettigrew

**Speak**

"I cannot stress how important these exams are. Your NEWT results will affect your career options for the rest of your life. If you achieve less th – Mr. Pettigrew!"

Peter Pettigrew jumped guiltily and hurriedly and stuffed his parchment into his bag. He looked up at his Transfiguration teacher and gulped nervously.

Professor McGonagall observed him sternly over the top of his spectacles. "You do wish to pass your NEWTs do you not Mr. Pettigrew?"

A nod and another gulp.

"Then perhaps you should consider focusing on your studies in class. I have no doubt that your skills in Hangman are unsurpassable, but I see no need for them in my class. Is that understood Mr. Pettigrew?"

Peter nodded and Professor McGonagall returned to her class.

"Now as I was saying, if you fail to achieve the required number of NEWTs, you will find it very difficult to get a job that does not involve washing dishes. So unless you wish to spend the remainder of your life in the Hog's Head, I highly recommend that you start revising for your exams now. I shall be supplying you with review packages which I expect you to complete when you com back – "

"But Professor, it's Christmas!"

"Quiet, Potter, or it will be double detention tonight. Miss Macdonald, kindly hand out these packages. Pettigrew, return these essays to your classmates. I must say, I was fairly pleased with the majority of your papers, but there are a few of you who need to put in some good hard work before June." Here, she stared pointedly at Peter, who promptly dropped the stack of essays in his hands. Turning bright red, he scuttled around the floor, picking up the scattered parchment. He was saved further embarrassment by the bell ringing, signalling the end of class and the start of the Christmas holidays.

There was a deafening scraping of chair legs as the class clamoured for the door. Peter emerged from under a table, still pink, hurriedly grabbed his books and made a beeline for the exit, leaving Professor McGonagall amidst a jumble of abandoned essays. Once safely in the hall, he paused, waiting for his friends to join him. They appeared momentarily, three boys, all laughing, no doubt, at his latest mishap.

"Well done, Wormtail. That's the third time this month."

Peter smiled weakly, attempting to laugh the matter of. His eyes, however, continued to dart around as if he expected Professor McGonagall to come storming out of her classroom at any moment and rain curses down on him. Remus noticed his behaviour and stopped laughing.

"C'mon Wormtail. Lighten up, it's Christmas! And there's Hogsmeade tomorrow!"

"Excellent," James interjected, grinning. "I'm getting low on Dungbombs. I owe Filch big time for that last detention."

"Watch yourself," Remus warned him. "Lily's just finally agreed to go out with you – don't drag her off to buy Dungbombs on your first date."

"Well, Padfoot can get me some, right?"

"Sorry mate, I'm broke."

"Broke?" James yelped. "You just bought yourself a bloody house. How can you be broke?"

"You know how much it takes to upkeep a house. There's the paint, and the windows, and it really needs a new roof too." Sirius grinned and dodged the quill James hurled at him.

Peter was just starting cheer up again when they passed the staff room and Professor Slughorn emerged, a half-empty box of crystallized pineapple in his hand.

"Ah, Mr. Pettigrew, just the person I wanted. We need to have a little chat, young man, about your grades." He beckoned Peter into the staffroom. "Potter, Black, you'd better come too. Lupin, you can go." He closed the door, shutting out the noise of the busy corridor and a rather surprised Remus. "Now then, let me see, where did I – Ah yes, here it is." He dug out of piece of parchment from his robes and handed it to Peter. There was a large _D_ emblazoned across it in bright red ink. "I think you have some explaining to do."

Peter opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He clenched the parchment in his pudgy hand until the bones of his knuckles showed up sharp and white against his skin. Still, he said nothing.

Professor Slughorn coughed loudly. "Come now, Mr. Pettigrew. I can't help you if you won't help me. Frankly, at this rate, I would be very surprised if you did not fail your NEWTs. However, it's not too late to pick up your grades and focus, if you're willing to try."

Peter nodded glumly, his lips pressed firmly together. Slughorn continued.

"Shall I tell you what I see?" He did not wait for Peter to reply. "I see a boy with perhaps not plenty of potential, but certainly enough brains to pull off an _A_ if he tried. And you've got plenty of opportunities; your friends Mr. Black and Mr. Potter could certainly help you. Their grades are excellent. Lupin, too, is not a bad student. And if you will take some advice from me, I suggest you ask Miss Evans or Mr. Snape for help. Both of them are highly talented students and I'm sure would be more than willing to help you." He turned to Sirius and James. "Give him some help, will you boys?"

"Yes Professor."

Slughorn nodded approvingly and patted Peter's shoulder. "Put in some work and I'm sure you'll pass." He waved his wand at the door, which flew open. "Merry Christmas. Think about what I've said."

The three boys pushed their way into the corridor wordlessly. Remus was waiting for them just outside the doors.

"What was that about?" he asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Slughorn wanted to talk about Wormtail's Potions mark. He looked a little drunk. Probably dug into the Christmas mead a little too early. Normally he can't even remember Wormtail's name, let alone be bothered to worry about his grades. Told him some rubbish about asking Snivellus for extra help."

James snorted. "As if Snivellus would want to help. He'd be a lot better off asking Lily; she's just as good as he is."

"I think you might be just the tiniest bit prejudiced," Remus pointed out.

"With good reason; she's loads better than him."

"Where are you taking her tomorrow anyways?" Sirius asked. "And please don't say Madame Puddifoot's."

"Well, I was thinking maybe The Three Broomsticks or Honeydukes. Unless you think she'd like the Hog's Head?"

They continued down the hall, debating the merits of the many coffee shops and bars in Hogsmeade.

And still, Peter was silent.


End file.
